Champs find much to like in current team incarnation

Hakeem Olajuwon waves to the crowd in the second half of Game 5 of a Western Conference quarterfinals of the 2017 NBA playoffs, April 24, 2017, in Houston. ( Karen Warren / Houston Chronicle )

Hakeem Olajuwon waves to the crowd in the second half of Game 5 of a Western Conference quarterfinals of the 2017 NBA playoffs, April 24, 2017, in Houston. ( Karen Warren / Houston Chronicle )

Photo: Karen Warren, Staff Photographer

Image 2 of 3

Rockets guard Chris Paul signals a converted bucket against the Spurs on Friday night at Toyota Center. Paul also had eight assists and was 10-for-18 from the field.

Rockets guard Chris Paul signals a converted bucket against the Spurs on Friday night at Toyota Center. Paul also had eight assists and was 10-for-18 from the field.

Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Chronicle

Image 3 of 3

The Rockets' Trevor Ariza pulls down an offensive rebound against the Spurs on Friday night at Toyota Center as several defenders make a grab for it.

The Rockets' Trevor Ariza pulls down an offensive rebound against the Spurs on Friday night at Toyota Center as several defenders make a grab for it.

Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Chronicle

To Hakeem Olajuwon, these Rockets look familiar

1 / 3

Back to Gallery

The Dream, Hakeem Olajuwon, knows something about dream seasons.

He lived a couple of them, practically hand-delivering two NBA titles to the city of Houston back in the day, and he's watching another one that might, a generation and multiple false starts later, produce a third.

"This," he said, "is the best chance" the Rockets have had in 23 years to bring home a third Larry O'Brien Trophy. "They are playing the best basketball in the league and the way they're doing it, with complementary (basketball) … chemistry … coaching. Everything is coming together at the right time. (Their) small lineup, (their) big lineup, (their) bench."

Team of starters

The Rockets have nine, maybe 10 players who could start for 95 percent of the NBA's teams. But their sum is even greater than their parts, which explains the following: They are almost a third of the way through a season they began by taking down the presumed best team in the NBA, Golden State, on the night the Warriors were trying to celebrate hanging up their 2016-17 championship banner, and they have lost to only three teams.

Translator

To read this article in one of Houston's most-spoken languages, click on the button below.

At 22-4 going into Friday's game against San Antonio, they're one game off the franchise-best 23-3 pace after 26 games, accomplished that first championship season of 1993-94. They've held double-digit leads in 20 of them. They've won 13 times by at least 15 points and eight times by more than 20. The current 11-0 streak is the team's longest in nearly a decade. Most recently Wednesday night, they came out flat against a clearly inferior Charlotte team - beforehand, coach Mike D'Antoni had warned about the dreaded "human nature" effect - but then punished the Hornets for their insolence with a 25-0 run.

Nobody should be able to score 25 unanswered points against an NBA team. But the Rockets did, and they did it with James Harden in little more than a peripheral role. Wednesday belonged to Chris Paul. This grand experiment, the pairing of two superstar point guards who aren't used to sharing center stage, is working out rather nicely, wouldn't you say?

High-powered offense

Olajuwon does.

"Those two guys, they are true leaders," he said, which says plenty coming from a man who carried Rockets teams on his back season after season after season. "You see the mutual respect. You walk into the locker room and you see that they really like each other. What they have is special."

It's closing in on Christmas and nobody has beaten the Rockets with Paul on the floor. He's 12-0. Who says you can't win them all? But Friday night's opponent, the San Antonio Spurs, is one eminently capable of offering a dissenting opinion. We have the Spurs largely to thank for Harden and Paul joining together to finish each other's sentences. The Rockets' - and, more startlingly, Harden's - collapse against them in the Western Conference semifinals last spring became the canary in the coal mine.

Disaster, or at least disappointment, was certain to keep lurking if Harden was going to be continually asked to carry exponentially more than his fair share of the load. Paul also had run into too many of the same kind of walls while he was a Los Angeles Clipper. They needed each other. Now they've got each other. To date, the Rockets average 121 points per game with Paul playing. When he was hurt, having suffered a bruised knee in the preseason, the number was 110.

So efficient offensively have the Rockets become with the pair working in tandem or spelling the other that D'Antoni's team, going into the Charlotte game, had what would be the highest "offensive rating" in NBA history, according to basketballreference.com. That meant their estimated number of points scored per 100 possessions was unsurpassed. At 115.7, they were 1 percentage point better than Golden State's 115.6 last season.

It's an obscure, geeky stat, but it's one that made D'Antoni say: "Best ever? Yeah, you go, 'wow.' It's a big deal that we have two of the best point guards to ever play the game.

"That's where this all comes from. It's definitely going to be a long-term benefit. The last game (when the Rockets had to come from behind to beat New Orleans) really showed it. James got dinged up a little bit early. In the second half, he was struggling, so he sort of (told Paul), 'You do it.' Chris took over. But James came back and finished it off."

The offensive rating dropped a hair, to 115.4, after the Hornets took their best shot. No big deal. In the end, of course, it's only a fun fact to point out, nothing more. Their 114.7 last season was lights-out, too, yet earned them nothing but a swift kick in the pants from San Antonio. Statistics are for losers, etc. The Rockets must validate themselves on the floor, 48 hard-running minutes at a time.

Tough conference

They have four games left to do so against the Spurs plus two more against Golden State and Boston and single dust-ups with Toronto and Cleveland. They lost badly to the Raptors but thumped the Cavaliers, both at home without Paul. Milwaukee with Giannis Antetokounmpo here Saturday night presents another intriguing test.

So would Clyde Drexler, the Hall of Famer turned Rockets broadcaster. He also played on a Rockets team, the one in 1994-95, that took its chances against anyone and prevailed, rewarding Houston with back-to-back victory parades.

"They're on a roll like I haven't seen in many, many years," Drexler said. "It's been fun to watch. I can't wait for April to get here."

Editor's note: This story is reprinted from the Chronicle's Texas Sports Nation magazine which is available to subscribers each Fridayat houstonchronicle.com/e-edition.